Rajeev Pentyala – Microsoft power platform blog

Pfe.Xrm library allows us to submit a bunch of XRM requests as batches (using ExecuteMultipleRequest) and execute them in parallel.

In this article, lets see how to use Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm library with a simple ‘Retrieve Request’.

What is Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm library?

• Contains a set of common components for building solutions using the Dynamics 365 SDK and is developed by Microsoft Premier Field Engineering (PFE) and core engineering teams.

Download Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm

• Use ‘Tools -> Nuget package manager’ from your Visual Studio to download the Nuget package.

Building blocks of Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm library

‘Microsoft.Pfe.Library’ allows us to trigger any ‘OrganizationRequest’ in batches (i.e.,ExecuteMultipleRequest) parallelly. Lets understand the building blocks of Pfe library.

• List<OrganizationRequest>
  • As a first step prepare your ‘RetrieveMultipleRequest’ objects and add them to a List.
• AsBatches() method
  • Call Pfe libraries AsBatches() method by passing the List prepared in previous step.
  • ‘AsBatches()’ returns IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleRequest> object.
• OrganizationServiceManager
  • Trigger ‘Microsoft.Pfe.Xrm’ OrganizationServiceManager() method to create connection object.
  • There are multiple ‘OrganizationServiceManager’ overload methods.
  • In this article, I am using the following method.

• ParallelProxy.Execute
  • This is the final method which accepts the ‘IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleRequest>’ object returned by AsBatches() method which we discussed in previous sections.
  • ParallelProxy.Execute also requires OrganizationServiceManager which we created in previous step.

IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleResponse> batchResponses = pfeXrmConnection.ParallelProxy.Execute(batchesOrgRequest);

Code Snippet

Now lets put all the building blocks together. It becomes as the following code snippet.

    public void RetrieveUsingPFE()
    {
        // Retrieve 'Account' and 'Contact'. You can prepare your list of entities.
        var listEntities=new List<>{ "account", "contact" };
        var batchRequests = new List<OrganizationRequest>();            

        int pageNumber = 1;
        string pagingCookie = null;

        // Filter for Active records. You can prepare your required filters as below.
        var filterActive = new FilterExpression(LogicalOperator.And);
        var condActive = new ConditionExpression("statecode", ConditionOperator.Equal, 0);
        filterActive.AddCondition(condActive);

        try
        {
            foreach (var entity in listEntities)
            {
                // Prepare 'Query Expression'
                var query = new QueryExpression(entity)
                {
                    ColumnSet = new ColumnSet(true),
                    PageInfo = new PagingInfo()
                };
                query.PageInfo.Count = 5000;
                query.PageInfo.PageNumber = pageNumber;
                query.PageInfo.PagingCookie = pagingCookie;

                query.Criteria.AddFilter(filterActive);

                var request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest
                {
                    Query = query
                };

                batchRequests.Add(request);
            }

            do
            {
                // Trigger Pfe.Execute
                var batchResponses = TriggerRequests(batchRequests);
                batchRequests = new List<OrganizationRequest>();
                pageNumber++;
                foreach (var responseItem in batchResponses)
                {
                    if (responseItem.EntityCollection.Entities.Count > 0)
                    {                            
                        var currEntityName = responseItem.EntityCollection.Entities[0].LogicalName;

                        foreach (var record in responseItem.EntityCollection.Entities)
                        {
                            // 'record' is the Retreieved record
                            // Perform your desired operations
                        }
                    }

                    if (responseItem.EntityCollection.MoreRecords)
                    {
                        var query = new QueryExpression(responseItem.EntityCollection.EntityName)
                        {
                            ColumnSet = new ColumnSet(true)
                        };

                        query.Criteria.AddFilter(filterActive);

                        var request = new RetrieveMultipleRequest();
                        query.PageInfo = new PagingInfo
                        {
                            Count = 5000,
                            PageNumber = pageNumber,
                            PagingCookie = responseItem.EntityCollection.PagingCookie
                        };

                        request.Query = query;
                        batchRequests.Add(request);
                    }
                }
            } while (batchRequests.Count > 0);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Error occurred, error message is {0}", ex.Message);
            throw ex;
        }            
    }

    public List<RetrieveMultipleResponse> TriggerRequests(List<OrganizationRequest> batchRequests)
    {
        var retrieveRequestBatches = batchRequests.AsBatches(recordsPerRequest);
        var batchResponses = ExecuteParallelProxy(batchRequests);            
        var listResponses = new List<RetrieveMultipleResponse>();

        foreach (var key in batchResponses.Keys)
        {
            foreach (var result in batchResponses[key].Responses)
            {
                if (retrieveRequestBatches[key].Requests[result.RequestIndex] is RetrieveMultipleRequest)
                {
                    var originalRequest = (RetrieveMultipleRequest)retrieveRequestBatches[key].Requests[result.RequestIndex];
                    // Capture failed records
                    if (result.Fault != null)
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine($" Exception : {result.Fault.Message}");
                    }
                    else if (result.Response != null && result.Response is RetrieveMultipleResponse) // Capture success records
                    {
                        var responseItem = (RetrieveMultipleResponse)result.Response;
                        listResponses.Add(responseItem);
                    }
                }                    
            }
        }

        return listResponses;
    }

    private IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleResponse> ExecuteParallelProxy(IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleRequest> retrieveRequestBatches)
    {            
        IDictionary<string, ExecuteMultipleResponse> batchResponses = null;
        try
        {
            batchResponses = CRMPfeConnection.ParallelProxy.Execute<ExecuteMultipleRequest, ExecuteMultipleResponse>(retrieveRequestBatches);                
        }
        catch (AggregateException ae)
        {
            foreach (var ex in ae.InnerExceptions)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"Aggregate Error in ExecuteParallelProxy : {ex.Message.ToString()}");
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"Error in ExecuteParallelProxy : {ex.Message.ToString()}");
        }

        return batchResponses;
    }

    public static OrganizationServiceManager CRMPfeConnection
    {
        get
        {
            if (crmPfeConnection == null)
            {
                var UserName = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["UserNameSrc"].ToString();
                var Password = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["PasswordSrc"].ToString();
                var OrganizationUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["OrganizationUriSrc"].ToString();
                ServicePointManager.SecurityProtocol = SecurityProtocolType.Tls11 | SecurityProtocolType.Tls12;
          crmPfeConnection = new OrganizationServiceManager(XrmServiceUriFactory.CreateOrganizationServiceUri(OrganizationUri), UserName, Password);
            }
            return crmPfeConnection;
        }
    }

• Similar to ‘RetrieveRequest’, you can trigger all kinds of requests.

🙂